Sumeyra Buran

Sumeyra Buran received her Ph.D. in postmodern literature and science fiction studies from the University of Ataturk in 2014. From 2014-2019, she has worked as an assistant professor at the Universities of Ataturk (Erzurum), Social Sciences (Ankara) and Istanbul Medeniyet (Istanbul). Since 2015, she has been working as a commission member of the Unit of Women Studies in Academia at the Council of Higher Education in Turkey which was established on May 29, 2015, with the mission of raising social gender equality consciousness in Turkish Universities publishing Gender Equality Policy and Sexual Harassment and Violence Policy Statements.

Besides, she has been dealing with international projects on violence against women after she has published her recent book TechnoFeminist Science Fiction (New York, 2015), the term she coined referencing to cyberfeminism and cyborg feminism following the philosophies of Sadie Plant and Donna Haraway by grounding it on the insights of Judy Wajcman’s TechnoFeminist approach.

She have been also leading some international and national projects on several topics such as technofeminism, increasing girls’ school attendance rates, promoting gender equality in education, Erasmus + EVS (European Volunteering Service), entrepreneurship, youth exchanges, children’s rights, STEM in education, femicide, violence against women, social gender equality, women studies, glass-ceiling, women in administrative positions, violence in sci-fi, cyber violence and technological violence, biotechnology, biogenetics and reproductive technology in SF, technology and women in Sci-Fi.

One of the biggest international projects she was involved as a Management of Committee is “Femicide Across Europe”, Cost Action IS-1206, a four-year project discussing various aspects of femicide which is funded under the umbrella of the EU’s wider intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST). She has contributed as one of the editors of chapter six on “Exploring the Data on Femicide across Europe” and as one of the authors for the “Turkey Report” in the same chapter of the published book Femicide Across Europe: Theory, Research, and Prevention(Policy, 2018). As one of the aims of this project, a group of researchers from 30 different countries committed themselves to set a European Observatory on Femicide which was established at the University of Malta, in 2018. Dr. Buran is a country group representative of Turkey being the main point of contact for the research group in the European Observatory on Femicide (EOF). She also applied to the Council of Higher Education, Turkey to establish TOF (Turkey Observatory on Femicide) under the Center of Human Rights at the University of Istanbul Medeniyet in cooperation with three ministries (Family, Law, and Interior) and with some stakeholders such as universities, associations, NGOs, journalists, representatives of victims and institutions dealing with femicide in her country. The Center of Human Rights and TOF were approved and now it is in the process of the announcement in the official gazette.

She was awarded a postdoc research fellowship grant by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) and she is currently working as a visiting scholar at University of California, Riverside studying on violence against women in science fiction under the supervision of Dr. Sherryl Vint. She is also working on three papers based on her TÜBİTAK project: Violence Against Women in Life by Gwyneth Jones, Engaging, Biogenetics through Scientific Experiment: End of the Y Chromosome and Birth of Many Sexes, and Femicide in Frankenstein.

In 2020, Sumeyra will become co-editor with Sherryl Vint of a collection book Technologies of Feminist Speculative Fiction, on women and reproductive technologies to be published by Palgrave. She will have a chapter in this collection on Being an Artificial Womb Machine Human: What does it mean to be a parent, a child, and a family in a technologically reproductive future?

Sümeyra Buran,“hiSTORiographic Metafiction of the Past Time: A self-begetting novel To Whom It May Concern”,Kafkas University Journal of the Institute of Social Sciences, Autumn 2018, Number 22, 377-389. DOI:10.9775/kausbed.2018.025.

Sümeyra Buran and Sadık Toprak, “Femicide in Turkey” in the chapter “Exploring the data on femicide across Europe” ed. by Sümeyra Buran et all,Femicide Across Europe, Policy Press, University of Bristol, 2018.

Sümeyra Buran Utku,“HISTORY AND PERSONAL STORY: SALMAN RUSHDIE’S MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN AND JULIAN BARNES’S A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10/2 CHAPTERS”, The Proceedings & Abstracts of ICONASH 2018 Istanbul, 2nd International Conference on New Approaches in Social Sciences and Humanities, pp. 253-257, October 26-28, 2018 İstanbul – Turkey. ISBN: 978-605-83063-5-6.

Sümeyra Buran, “Percentage of Girls in Vocational Schools in Turkish Higher Education and Statistical Percentages of Girls by Programs”,CoHE Women Studies and Problems in Academia Commission Meeting, The Council of Higher Education, 02 December 2016, Ankara.

Sümeyra Buran, “Obstacles to the Continuation of Education of Girls and Search for Solutions”Conference, European Union Pre-Accession Financial Cooperation (IPA) Program “Project on Increasing School Ratio of Girls” KEP 2, Şanlıurfa, 15-16 Mart 2016.

Sümeyra Buran, “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of English Language and Literature, Croatia, 01.05.2015.

Sümeyra Buran,“TechnoFeminist Science Fiction,” University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of English Language and Literature, Croatia, 30.04.2015.

Sümeyra Buran,“Introduction to Gothic Literature,” University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of English Language and Literature, Croatia, 29.04.2015.

Sümeyra Buran,“British Romanticism: Prose,” University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of English Language and Literature, Croatia, 28.04.2015.

Sümeyra Buran,“TechnoWoman and her TechnoWorld,” Canadian International Conference on Humanities and Education at ILR NYC Conference Center, Cornell University, New York, 20-21th January 2015.

Sümeyra Buran,“Feminist Ideology of an Academic Woman in Margaret Drabble’s Milestone”, Gender Studies in the Age of Globalization,Spiru Haret University, Faculty of Letters, Bucharest, Romania, 2-3 June 2011.

“Volunteering Forum”, T. R. Ministry of EU Education and Youth Programs Center of the European Union (Turkey National Agency),1 December 2016, Ankara.

“Research Project of Addiction among University Students in Turkey (University Youth Profile Research)” (Workshop III), T. R. Ministry of Family and Social Policies, General Directorate of Family and Community Services, 21 September 2016, Ankara.

“Research Project of Addiction among University Students in Turkey (University Youth Profile Research)”, Workshop II, T. R. Ministry of Family and Social Policies, General Directorate of Family and Community Services, 9-10 March 2016, Haymana, Ankara.

“Research Project of Addiction among University Students in Turkey (University Youth Profile Research)”, Workshop I, T. R. Ministry of Family and Social Policies, General Directorate of Family and Community Services, 20-22 January 2015, Kızılcahamam, Ankara.

Seminar on Guiding Counseling, Erzurum Directorate of National Education, Erzurum 16-10 March 2006.

Interviews

“Interview with the writer Professor Sue Thomas on TechnoFeminism and on her novel Correspondence”, by Sümeyra Buran, De Montfort University, Institute of Creative Technologies in the Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities, Leicester, UK, March 18-22, 2013.

“An Interview with a good profile of young and successful woman Sumeyra Buran on Gender Inequality in Public Spaces and the Place of Women in Society”, by editor Metin Güven Uşun, LIFE, The First and Only Magazine of the Region, 2 (18), Erzurum, Dec. 2015.

Courses and Lectures

British Romanticism, Zagreb University in Department of English Language and Literature, Croatia.

Introduction to Gothic Literature and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Zagreb University in Department of English Language and Literature, Croatia.

TechnoFeminist Science Fiction, Zagreb University in Department of English Language and Literature, Croatia.

Speaking, Writing and Cultural Studies, Higher Vocational State School in Wloclawek, Poland.

Turkish Universities: Social Sciences University of Ankara, University of Ataturk and Zonguldak Karaelmas University

MNE-EU:Promoting Gender Equality in Education Project (PGEE), funded by the European Union and the Government of Turkey, Ministry of National Education: 3.161.500 Euro

MNE-EU: Technical Assistance for “Increasing School Attendance Rates Especially for Girls (IAREFG), funded by the European Union and the Government of Turkey, Ministry of National Education: 180.000.000 Euro